Thursday, April 23, 2015

Dateline: Los Angeles, 1970, which is where we find Private Eye
Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) living in a beach house with a view in
a fictional, seacoast enclave called Gordita
Beach. He’s totally
wasted, but that doesn’t stop Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine
Waterston) from approaching her ex-boyfriend for help with a personal problem.

Seems that the fetching femme fatale is currently the mistress of real
estate magnate Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), and she has reason to believe
that the philandering billionaire is about to be
involuntarily committed to a mental institution by his vindictive wife, Sloane
(Serena Scott Thomas), and her lover, Riggs Warbling (Andrew Simpson).

Against his better judgment, Doc takes the
case, and soon finds himself swept into a seamy underworld filled with colorful
characters ranging from a recently-paroled black radical (Michael Kenneth
Williams) to an avowed white supremacist (Christopher Allen Nelson) to the
proverbial prostitute with the heart of gold (Hong Chau). After being conked on
the head, Doc comes around in a police station where he learns that he’s the
prime suspect not only in the disappearance of both Mickey and Shasta Fay, but
in a murder to boot.

So unfolds Inherent Vice,
a surreal whodunit far more concerned with recreating the feel of the
post-Sixties’ daze of free-flowing drugs than with crafting a compelling crime
thriller. Unfortunately, the absence of a credible plotline means the premise
soon dissolves into a rudderless, meandering mess, reducing the viewing
experience to enjoying the retro décor, fashions and slang of the period.

The picture was directed by five-time
Oscar-nominee Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights and
Magnolia), who also adapted the script from the Thomas Pynchon best-seller of
the same name.

The film does feature a few standout
performances, most notably, Joaquin Phoenix in the starring role, and Josh
Brolin as a hard-nosed LAPD officer. Otherwise the production makes precious
little use of the services of its cluttered, A-list cast which includes Academy
Award-winners Reese Witherspoon (for Walk the Line) and Benicio del Toro (for
Traffic), and Oscar-nominees Eric Roberts (for Runaway Train) and Owen Wilson
(for The Royal Tenenbaums).

An
unstructured, atmospheric affair ostensibly designed to appeal to folks
nostalgic for the hedonistic hippie era.

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KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.